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A while back, when I was having trouble with Safari crashing, I tried Firefox but switched back to Safari after a week or two of using it. Firefox is inelegant as compared to Safari, and I miss several of the keyboard shortcuts, things I used constantly.

I thought that about Mozilla when I first downloaded it a while back, but when I checked out Firefox a little more recently, I found it to be as elegant, if not more so, than Safari. Plus, it's got going for it that it's the same browser that I use at work most of the time. The only thing that I'm really missing so far is being able to go "back" by hitting the "backspace" key.

Nope, the most recent version is 1.0, so we must have been using the same thing. *shrug* Probably a matter of taste -- I've noticed that your tastes tend more to the "strict Mac with a preference to Next, if possible" while mine tend more towards "mostly Mac, but there's some wiggle room." It's also probably clouded by the fact that I probably use Windows and Linux machines more often than you do, as well.

I use a Linux machine quite frequently, but never a Linux GUI - always a command line. (My lone x86 machine is a Linux box.) And yes, you certainly use Windows more than I do, but that would be true of almost anyone. ;)

I'm not actually a new convert -- I've used Mozilla in some form or other on my Windows box at work for a while now. It's only recently that I switched on my Mac box at home for my default browser. I've been using it for a while at home, just not as default. Until now.

Safari isn't Mozilla, but it's based on the same engine that Mozilla uses. I was happy with Safari for a long while, but I'm running OS 10.2, so I can't upgrade to the latest version of Safari, and the version that I can use doesn't work with Gmail. Coupled with the fact that I use Firefox all the time at work, it was an easy decision to go ahead and switch at home, too.

My wallet doesn't support an OS upgrade every 18 months unless there's a pressing need to upgrade. Since 10.2 is pretty stable and very useful for what I do, I decided to skip Panther. I plan on getting Tiger when it comes out (assuming my hardware will run it -- I'm on a toilet-seat (aka clamshell) iBook SE (firewire), with no plans to upgrade hardware anytime soon).

Yeah, it seems as though Apple has settled into a $130 price tag for "major" releases. Until the release of 10.3, each of the major releases were worth the $130 to me, 'cause there were lots of big bug fixes in the first rounds, and big improvements in the later rounds. But the 10.2 to 10.3 transition didn't offer enough improvement for my little G3 to justify the purchase price. I hear that there were some good speed-up improvements that my hardware would have liked, but... *shrug*... my current set-up is good enough.

I just want to make sure I don't get in an "obsolete" cycle, though, so I plan on "leap-frogging" major releases. I suspect I'll get the odd numbered versions from here on out, unless I upgrade hardware in an evan-numbered version cycle.

Actually, I don't really like Firefox. My IE setup is fine, and I never have errors. If I browse my usual sites, or try and do my normal things, it asks me weird questions and reformats my browsed websites. Along with logging everything I do, it's not very pretty.

IE isn't really an option on the Mac anymore, 'cause Microsoft recognized that they couldn't keep up with Safari development and quit making updates a while ago. As far as IE vs. Mozilla on a Windows box, I've been with Mozilla in some form or another for a while now. As far as buggyness goes, I find Firefox to be less buggy than IE -- sure, you hear about the Firefox bugs more, but that's really only 'cause there's a public database of them. It's certainlly much more secure than IE, but if you take decent security precautions then IE should be fine.

Anyway, I love the tabbed browsing available in Safari and Firebird. And I find that Firebird is much, much snappier.

Ahhh that's right, your hooked on macs. Bleh, I won't even try :) I usually can switch between mods or interfaces or even different software pretty eaisly, but from just trying to use firefox, it has all been so different. I don't know exactly, but I just can't.

I almost never get spyware / adware / popups anymore, but when I just now installed a google toolbar, it changed some of my security settings and instantly I have a popup (spyware) built into my IE install and every time I click a link it popsup a new window.... It just goes to show how easy it is to mess up the perfect configuration. My computer is definately in need of a checkup for the usual. I'll let it scan tomarrow.

This is Dan Moore if you didn't figure that out yet ;) I drop by every now and then to see what's aloof. All's boring in Charlotte these days.

If you're going to use FireFox and visit sites that require Java, you might want to look into the Java Embedding Plugin. It lets you use Java 1.4 with browsers besides Safari. Without it, you're stuck using 1.3.